The human capacity to embrace both justice and compassion

Is it, then, hopelessly unrealistic to imagine a day when fur coats will follow whalebone corsets into fashion oblivion, when slaughterhouses will exist only in history books, and when all the scientific laboratories of the world will have a sign over their entrances proclaiming No Animals Allowed? Those who are pessimistic about the moral possibilities of humanity will answer yes. And perhaps they are right. But those who believe in the human capacity to embrace both justice and compassion, not among isolated individuals but throughout the extended human family, will answer no. Not in my lifetime, perhaps, but someday surely, I believe, the principled journey to abolition, at the level of society, will be complete. … in a variety of ways this long journey already has begun.~ Tom Regan (November 19, 2003)